First, UW is 16th in the pre-season coaches poll, which strikes me as just about right. With so many unknowns, it's hard to make a case that they deserve to be a lot higher than that right now. I stress the "right now'' part of that sentence. This is obviously a team that will get a lot better as the year goes on.

Second, here's a link to our take in today's paper on the UW-Gonzaga schedling deal. I stress that this is a column by our college basketball writer Bud Withers and understand it may not be completely popular with all readers of this blog, knowing most of you are died-in-the-wool Husky fans. But Bud brings a worthy perspective to this issue.